


340 years.

by bofurrific



Series: Hobbit Drabbles [53]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bofurrific/pseuds/bofurrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over his 340 years of life, Dwalin periodically wishes he could give it all up for his princes who never even saw 100. For an anon on tumblr.</p><p> </p><p>or:</p><p>Dwalin thinks Mahal has forgotten about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	340 years.

Dwalin watches Dain's coronation and is quiet. Dain will be a good king, of course he will, and Dwalin bids him no ill will, but it should be  _Thorin_  on that throne. It should be Fili and Kili, the dwarf princes of Erebor who saw their mountain but once before they died defending it, standing proud at his side, and not buried with him.

 

Dis comes to the mountain alone and weds the king. She produces an heir and they name him for his fallen brother, and the direct line of Durin again has a place at the throne and Dwalin sees the boy's uncle in him. But the next two Dain suggests naming after the princes who never were, and though he means it to honour to boys, it casts a shadow over the household when their names are spoken.

 

Fili has no golden mane or sharp blue eyes, and when Kili picks up his first weapon, there is no bow in his fingers, and it is not their fault, these little princes who bear the names of brothers they never knew, but Dwalin chooses to train Thorin III and Gimli instead, and leaves Fili and Kili to another warrior.

 

Dwalin looks to the memorials, and wishes for the thousandth time that he could offer up his life in their stead, but what is the life of an old warrior when compared with princes?

_________________________

 

Sixty years pass from the battle's end, and a meeting is called in Rivendell. Erebor sends Gimli and Gloin and Dwalin watches them go. It should be Kili joining them, his Kili with dark hair and eyes, an easy smile and fingers quick with an arrow. He's heard that Bilbo lives there with the elves, that he has a relative at the center of this meeting, and it aches in him so hard he can't catch his breath for a moment to think how much his princes would have loved to see him again.

 

He is already old for a dwarf, just past two and a half centuries; his brother has gone to Moria, couldn't stay in the shadow of Erebor without Thorin there, and it is unfair that he should have such a full life, a lonely life, when Fili and Kili never reached a hundred. Dwalin goes to the memorial and weeps to them, apologizes to them, for outliving these precious boys.

_________________________

 

Gimli returns and bears ill news of Moria. Dwalin mourns his brother and his cousin and little Ori, who may have outlived his princes but still died too soon. And he thinks of all the years he has lived and hates himself. He has never married, never fallen in love, never done anything beyond the wars he's fought, the scars on his body and the boys he trained and sent to die, and he knows that Fili and Kili, and even Ori would have done more had they been given the time, and he wishes he could give them his life.

_________________________

 

Their hobbit, their little burglar who was barely 50 on their journey, sails into the West at the most respectable hobbit-age of 131. Dwalin makes the journey to see him one last time, although he never thought he would set foot in an elf house again, and they clasp arms. Bilbo is old and he looks it, but his eyes are young and sparkling and still as he thinks of his next adventure, and Dwalin knows he will see Thorin again, wants to ask the halfling to look after his king and their princes, but the words stick in his throat and his eyes are hot when he bids the burglar farewell one last time.

 

_________________________

 

And then Dwalin is alone. Gloin and Bifur and his cousins and the rest of the Brothers Ri are gone and Dwalin envies them all, in Mahal's grace and together again, and he wonders if maybe the Maker has forgotten him, three and a quarter centuries old and alone. Thorin III sits upon his uncle's throne and his son reclaims Moria back from the orcs that slew Dwalin's brother and the young scribe who had traveled with him. And Dwalin visits the mine, prays before his brother's tomb, the room that held his last breath. He is old and he rests his head on the cool stone that houses his brother's bones and talks to him for long hours about all the things he wishes he could give up.

 

_________________________  
  
+1 

 

In the end, Dwalin goes back to Erebor. He does not want to die in the mines, away from the graves of his king and princes. His quarters under the mountain face the monuments of Fili and Kili and though he no longer has the strength to visit them, he can see them out his window and tells them every day of the things he thinks they would have done had they been given his time, and he apologizes for every morning he awakes with breath in his lungs that they are still underground and he is still above it.

 

When Mahal takes him, finally, into his loving arms, Dwalin wakes to find Fili and Kili, and young and bright as he remembers, near sitting on his chest in eagerness. He has lived more years than any dwarf and they want to know everything  _everything_ that he has seen.

 

And for the first time, Dwalin doesn't mind that he lived so long.


End file.
